EDITORIAL: U.S. PLANS DEATH CAMP
Washington has floated plans to turn the U.S. base at Guantan amo into a
death camp, with its own execution chamber. Prisoners there could be
tried, convicted and put to death without facing charges or a jury.
There would be no right of appeal.
This proposal was disclosed by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander in
charge of some 680 prisoners from 43 countries being held at Camp Delta.
The prison is part of the Pentagon base that illegally occupies a corner
of the island nation of Cuba.
Miller's remarks were quoted in an article in The Mail of Brisbane,
Australia, on May 25.
The publicity created an embarrassment for the government of Tony Blair.
The British ruling class, an older imperial power, has accepted a role
as a junior ally to the war drive of the U.S. empire but it has no death
penalty. Downing Street's response to the exposure of the death camp
plans was terse and avoided condemnation: "The U.S. government is well
aware of the British government's position on the death penalty."
U.S. law professor Jonathan Turley, who has led protests against the
Pentagon tribunals at Camp Delta, said, "It is not surprising the
authorities are building a death row because they have said they plan to
try capital cases before these tribunals.
"This camp was created to execute people," he stressed. "The
administration has no interest in long-term prison sentences for people
it regards as hard-core terrorists."
"Regards" is the operative word here. Not a single person held at
Guantanamo since the Afghanistan War has been officially charged with a
single crime in the 18 months they have spent caged at Camp Delta, far
from their homes. They are, in the lingo of legal limbo, "suspects."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dubs them "illegal combatants."
That linguistic sidestep allows the U.S. to violate the requirements for
humane treatment of prisoners of war specified under the Geneva
conventions. Of course, the rights of civilians are also protected by
the same Geneva conventions, and the Pentagon brass has crushed their
rights, too, in this endless war of terror cynically camouflaged as a
war on terror.
Rumors of torture during interrogations at Camp Delta, another breach of
international law, have also leaked out. A front-page article in the
Dec. 26, 2002, Washington Post called attention to the decades-long
policy of the CIA that allows its agents to torture anyone in its
custody. The CIA maintains interrogation facilities at the U.S. naval
base at Guantanamo Bay.
According to the Post, detainees "are sometimes kept standing or
kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles... . At
times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep
with a 24-hour bombardment of lights--subject to what are known as
'stress and duress' techniques."
Also, "captives are often 'softened up' by MPs [military police] and
U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in
tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown
into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and
deprived of sleep."
Prisoners as young as 13 years old have been taken to Guantanamo. On
March 5, Lt. Col. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokes person, told the
French Press Agency that there had been 20 attempted suicides there so
far. There are also reports of several deaths.
Now comes the news that the Pentagon intends to try these prisoners in
kangaroo courts and execute those it finds guilty of terrorism--which it
defines as nothing more than fighting against the U.S. forces that
invaded Afghanistan with fearsome weapons and are still carrying out
sporadic bombings and raids on impoverished villages. The generals are
relying on the constant racist stereotypes of Middle Eastern people
delivered by the media to numb the public's shock over such tyrannical
practices.
The imprisonment of more than 2 million people in the United States--
disproportionately people of color--and the untrammeled, racist use of
the death penalty as a weapon of terror have been under attack. This
struggle should be expanded to include an end to the illegal detentions
on Guantanamo and the dismantling of this death camp.